Wednesday, November 30

Fancy Stationary Makes for a Perfection Complex

There is a dream I have: Holding a copy of my published novel and swooning over the perfect printed pages.

There is a nightmare I have: Finding a typing error or other mistake in that published novel.

I'm an aspiring author. I love the adrenaline I get from typing away at my laptop but I also love writing by hand. In fact, a lot of my blog posts (including this one) I write first in pen and then type up.

It's a mystery as to why I gush over writing something down with ink because I don't have spartacular spectacular handwriting.* There is something about the thought process connecting with the movement of the pen that makes ideas flow more easily, despite the fact that writing by hand is much slower than typing.

I adore writing lists. When I am plotting planning something, I write lists of what I wish to accomplish or just write down my thought process on what I want to achieve. I write lists of books that I plan to read in the near future or which writing project I want to focus on next or even in the month after the next. Do I stick to these plans? Never Not always...but I love to scheme scribble.

With my handwriting obsession indulgence, I am drawn to the perfect platform for my inked words. Gorgeous stationary, that would give me a feeling akin to what something perfect and published would feel like, only rogue. Something rough but refined. Sounds ridiculous? Well, it is.

I cannot spell. I cannot write in the same way for a prolonged period of time. I make mistakes and I hate crossing words out but I also dislike using white-out products. I am determined to make something perfect on the very first go.

This feeling is akin to when you envision the novel you want to write, when you first have the idea. It is perfect to you. When you begin to write that first draft and it, well...sucks, then you are thrown into despair. The fact of it is, you just can't write something perfect in one swoop of ink on pretty pages.

Addicted to snazzy stationary, that's me. I have to steer clear of the stationary section in bookstores and supply stores. It just makes me envision the rare happenstance that I might be able to write something awesome by hand into some gorgeous writing book. Sort of how J.K. Rowling hand-wrote those five copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Crazy, awesome, genius woman.

Never, ever, ever, buy a workbook that compels you to need to write something perfect inside it. What you need to do is get a plain workbook of a medium size (fat ones always fall apart) that you can just scribble in, 'til your heart's content. A spiral notebook is always good, too.

These days, I just have workbooks that may vary in colour or have stripes but are not from the expensive must-write-perfection-in-me stationary section. It makes for more constructive writing and less procrastination and perfection complexes.

What kind of stationary do you prefer to write with? Do you like to hand-write before you type?